


The Salt Heir

by Madeleinejohanna



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Transformation, Big Sisters, Childhood Memories, Female Character of Color, Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Fish, Fish out of Water, Magic, Magical Girls, Matriarchy, Memories, Mermaids, Nature, POV Female Character, Siblings, Sisters, Transformation, Travel, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-10 15:01:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madeleinejohanna/pseuds/Madeleinejohanna
Summary: In the Ziadeh household, the girls inherit everything, but things are going very wrong for the oldest daughter, Sarani, just as she's set to come into her own on the family's holdings. This is not the time for her (mostly) dormant Gift to be rearing it's ugly head (WIP)





	1. Little Girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's spring but it feels like summer. The two eldest girls are going for a swim. Things go sideways, and we go for a stroll down memory lane with Sarani.

     Madani's feet–bare as usual–thud against the earth as she flies down the path ahead of me. She's all of our father, but more petite, with those soft auburn curls bouncing against her sun-dappled, golden shoulders, her finely muscled arms pumping at her sides. She picks up speed as she advances through the trees, and nary a root catches her fleet, pale toes, though my feet and ankles, a dark burnished copper to her gold, are snagged constantly and my skirts along with them. It's her Gift, and all these years later, I'm still unsure how it works–whether she has a perfect mental map of where each tripping root and snagging bramble lies and she's nimbly stepping around each one, or if she's using her mind to coax them back and away from her feet, and _her feet only_ –because I am rapidly falling behind, as usual, having to watch my every step.   
     "Dani!" I holler after her. "Come on, slow—" I gasp a breath in. "Slow down!" It feels like we've done this a few thousand times, and perhaps we have, by now. I know the next step already, and the next. She doesn't hear me–or she's pretending not to. She's already pulling out of sight. I kilt up my skirts and lengthen my stride in a desperate attempt to catch up. She's been just out of reach a lot lately, and not just when we're racing down to the lake.  
     When I finally get there, she is standing, as usual, in her loin wrap and the breast band she doesn't really need–she started wearing one as a point of pride at the same age I had, and now uses it more as a convenient stash than to control her nonexistent chest. She stands waist deep in the cool green water, and one of her hands is making trips back and forth, sneaking bread crusts from her breast band and then breaking them up into crumbs just above the water's surface, and the other hand is distributing playful tickles and nudges to the swarm of various fishes crowded about her. I suspect these mornings are the highlights of their fishy lives, and perhaps the highlight of her day as well, but I can hear mischief calling my name and I simply can't resist. I strip down to my own underclothes at the tree line, debating whether to hang my dress here or lay it out at the shore of the lake, knowing full well that if I leave it here, out of sight and mind, our younger sister Ilani will likely have absconded with it by the time we're done swimming.  
     I fully intend to dive off the dock and make the largest splash possible, causing a massive commotion for my sister and her slimy, scaly little friends. I've never had much love for them, and I think the feeling is mutual. I toss my dress over a low branch, accepting the naked run home now, and take a running start. With nothing to trip them up, my feet can truly fly in the grass of the clearing, and then on the worn wood of the dock, long strides carrying me as fast as the wind as my black hair kites out behind me and I gather the momentum I'll need to launch myself up into the air, and then plunge headfirst into the cool, green water, and—

* * *

     Madani's tiny bare feet are pattering rapidly down the path ahead of me, her skinny little arms flung out wide, while her curls–just a few shades darker than my red brown skin–bounce around wildly against her pale gold neck and shoulders. She picks up speed as she advances through the trees, and not single a root catches her little toes, though I think I've stubbed every single one of mine, and my feet and ankles are snagged constantly. I've even ripped a little corner shaped snag in my skirts on a low hanging branch. When we race indoors–only when mother and da are out, of course–I win by strides, being older and taller and all around better at most things because I've had three whole years more than she has for practising, but once we step outside I just can't keep up. I think nothing of it now, but later—

"Dani!" I holler after her. "Slow down!" She pays me no heed, already pulling out of sight. I hike up my skirts and put on a last ditch burst of speed to try and catch her. It backfires and I fall on my face, unable to catch myself because I'm holding my gods damned skirts.   
     When I finally get to the lake, rubbing at my scraped chin, she is in her underthings, crouching in the cool green water and holding communion with the fish in the pond. They crowd around her, and she's coaxing them up and into her hands one by one for a few words' greeting, a gentle tickle, and some crusts and crumbs she must have taken from breakfast, a treat they're unaccustomed to in this little lake to the west of the grounds. I am standing at the tree line, about to strip down to my own underclothes so that I can join her for a swim.  
     "Dani, I—"  
     "Quiet Sarani, or you'll scare them," she whispers to me in the most preposterous contortion, crouching with her bum out, left hand in the water and full of a massive brown fish, right arm lifted up and back to balance herself, speaking to me with her little head jutting out under the raised arm.  
     The entire view has me dumbfounded. She's always been a little animal magnet since the day she made her escape from our mother's belly. One of our house cats, Alby, slept beside her in her cradle every night from birth, grooming her wispy little curls and letting her grasp his tail or a paw for comfort. Once she got up and walking she started trailing a little row of animals from around the holdings; it's not too odd for one of our farmers to realise a lamb or half his geese are off on a stroll with my baby sister, ducklings behind a little mama duck. But this?  
     I have never seen the likes of this. Even around Madani, wild animals and things like lizards, frogs and fish have always been skittish. They'll come for food, but stay at a distance, and they've never—  
     "NO! Nonononono!" I hear my baby sister cry as she lunges forward, reaching out, and topples face-first into the shallows of the lake, pulling me out of my daydream in an instant. Her new fish friends scatter like water droplets on a hot skillet. I find myself up to my knees in the lake almost before I have time to blink, let alone think, and I am pulling Madani out of the muck by the waistband of her loin wrap as she sputters and cries.  
     I guide her around to the bathing side of the lake where we spend most of our summers swimming and splashing, stripping my soaked skirts off as we walk. I lay my dress on the bank to dry, and lay a hand on my sister's mud-splattered shoulders. I lead her as we wade into the lake. She sinks gratefully into the water, swiping the mud from her eyes and rinsing it from her curls.  
     "What happened, Dani?" I ask her as I submerge myself happily in the cool water, watching as my long black hair spools out around me on the lake's surface. Her eyes are wide and she looks a bit panicked and a bit shocked as she starts to babble.  
     "The fish, I thought they might— because this week a mouse has been watching me in the morning when I wake up, every morning, like he wants to come say hello but he won't so I give him food and leave him be and this morning when I woke up there was the mouse and when I was putting down his food he ran up the back of my hand and right up my arm to my hair and he wasn't even scared and I fed him there and that was new and I didn't know if it was because I fed him all week that we're friends now or if I'm better at making animal friends today and just today or from now on and so I thought I would try with the fish, not just tossing them some food in like I do sometimes, you know, from far away, because anyone can do that— _even you can do that—"_ I try not to take offence as she continues on, "—but making friends with them like I do with the cats and goats, and like I did with the mouse because the mouse is wild and usually wild animals don't want to be friends and neither do the fish but then the mouse did so I wanted to try it with the fish cos you know I love to watch them so if I could be their friend, I— I just love them, Sar."  
     She hasn't breathed once in this entire story, and she's growing more and more upset, and with this last she takes in a giant gasp and looks over at me, seeking approval. I nod and she continues.  
     "Well I saved them some crusts and I was breaking them up some and feeding them to the fish and they were being so good and we were making friends and they came right up into my hands but I was breaking the bites with one hand because I was using the other hand to say hello and make friends with and pet their bellies–they shake their bums when I scratch their bellies–and I was clumsy and I put down a piece that was too big I guess for most of them and one of the little tiny silver nibble fish wanted to eat it even though it was twice as big as him and one of the giant brown whisker fishes wanted to eat it too and the little fish got sucked right up with the bread when the big fish ate it and I tried to stop him I really did and then I thought maybe I could fix it so I grabbed him and I tried to reach in his mouth and get the silver fish but his bottom lip was kinda sharp and I couldn't see with him in the water so I had to hold him up but he couldn't really breathe up so I had to also put him down and my hand was just too big—it's all bones and corners and it got stuck," Madani is a small six, and the idea that hand she holds up for inspection could be too big for anything seems ridiculous, but I don't interrupt, "—and I couldn't reach so I squeezed him a little to try and make him spit up and I made him be upside down and I shook him a tiny bit while he was–upside down, I mean–but the big fish ate the tiny silver fish and it's all my fault, and then I panicked Sar, cos I had him out of the water upside down for a second and he was flapping and I was just trying to get him to give back the little fish and I tripped putting him back in to breathe and now he's gone too and he got killed in the most awful way. I fell on him! I crushed him under me and I felt his little back bones break!" Her little chin begins to wobble and a tear escapes as she continues.  
     "I was just so scared for the small fish cos he was alive inside the big fish's belly, and he was scared and I thought for sure I could save him–I just had to save him–cos that's such an awful way to die too, to be alive when you get eaten, and to be so scared, and to suffocate in someone's belly, but they both died cos I didn't break the food up little enough and cos I tried to save the little one. I should have just let him die!" The tears are falling freely now. I'm towing her toward the area where the fish were fed this morning.  
"He was going to be my friend—they were both going to be my friends and they were supposed to be alive right now and they were supposed to be my friend until they grew up and found fishy husbands and wives and laid fishy eggs and had tiny fishy babies and got old, old, old, but I got the tiny one killed with my /stupid/ bread and I killed the big one with my big /stupid/ hands Sar—I killed my friends and now they don't get husbands or wifes or babies or bread or anything anymore!"  
     Her face crumples as she finishes her confession and starts properly sobbing. I feel so helpless. I don't think I can fix this. I scoop her up and cradle her in my arms nonetheless, swooping and bouncing her on the water until her tears subside to rough hiccups.  
     "First things come first. You've got to stop with this 'supposed to be' business." I tell her, as my eyes catch on the floating body of the catfish.  
     "But—"  
     "But nothing. Andhir did not save them, and if she didn't, then you couldn't hope to–everything under the surface of this lake is hers. If they were 'supposed to be' here now, instead of flattened," I wince, knowing the hands-on death is probably the one she feels worst about, "and in a belly, they would be. Dwar has shepherded them into Tas's kingdom now. All is as the gods will it, right?" She nods, conceding for now. It's hard to argue with the gods. She makes a quick gesture of obeisance to Tas, and, silly as I feel invoking the Mother of Souls over a fish, I do the same. "And as for the brown fish, you can't go trying to make him–or anyone else, for that matter–spit out his breakfast, just because it wasn't bread crusts. That's not your place, Dani." She turns away from me at this. I don't mind; it gives me an opening.  
     "Do you remember what we ate this morning, little duck?" I ask, pulling the body of the fish below the water's surface and feking about for, then grabbing the sharpest rock I can find with my toes.  
     "Cold chicken in bread?" She turns back toward me, curious.  
     "Yes we did. And you love chickens! I bet you even knew that chicken! In fact, we can find out tonight, if that's okay with you." She nods, but her eyes are wide and uncertain. "We don't have to if you'd rather not. The point is, you didn't reach down my throat or squeeze da to make us spit up our chicken, did you? And you ate yours as well; you didn't cry like this."  
     "Should I have?" She asks, her face deadly serious, brows furrowing.  
     "No! No, little duck. She was raised by one of the farmers on the holdings–she laid eggs and hatched little chickens, and maybe even followed baby you around like one of your ducklings–but she was raised so that, at the end of all that, she'd be dinner or breakfast or lunch, if not for us, then for someone else. And maybe that someone would be one of our farmers or other landholders, or maybe that someone would be a raiding wolf, or a stray dog, or maybe us, but someday that chicken was going to be food Dani, and so were your fish, even if they just got old and died and became food for plants and little bugs and other fish." I turn the catfish over in my hands underwater, hoping against hope, and sending a quick prayer up to Andhir, who watches over all water, hoping that our lake isn't too tiny to escape her notice, and hoping against hope that I may just be right. I throw one to Dwar and Tas as well, putting my everything behind it.  
     "Why? Why can't I just eat bread and no chicken? Why can't the fishes? Why can't everybody?" She pushes me out to arms length and looks me in the eye, deadly serious.  
     "Well you could," I tell her, as I use my improvised stone knife to try to open the belly of the fish with without catching her attention, "but you wouldn't be very strong or healthy eating bread and only bread. In fact, you'd get awfully fat eating nothing but that! We need to eat other things to keep our bodies strong and healthy. You couldn't ask a bear or a wolf or a tiger to just graze on hay and grass–to never ever hunt again–could you?" At this image she giggles, snuggling back in toward my chest. I spin her to face me, perching her on my knees. Part of this is so she doesn't bump into the fish I'm working on, but mostly it's so I can see her face.  
"Smile for me little duck!" We both bare our teeth at one another, and the smile from Madani elicits a truly happy smile from me, but both our smiles soon turn into toothy grimaces, pulling faces. I release my silly snarl to explain things to her.   
     "You were made to eat rice and bread and oats—that's why you have flat, mashing teeth in back like the horses in the stable who eat things like that," I tell her, pulling a hand from the water and tapping her cheek over the teeth I mean. I can see her tongue roam back to explore them. "You were also made to eat plants–vegetables and fruits–that's why you have flat chopping front teeth like the bunnies that Mr. Dixit raises. But you were also made to eat meat, Dani. That's why you have such pointy, sharp, ferocious teeth on the corners, like wolves and tigers do!" I point to them and nearly lose a fingertip for my trouble as she snaps at it like the dogs I just mentioned. By now I've got the large fish's skin open and I feel a hopeful wriggling in what must be his stomach. Dwar hasn't shepherded him into the afterlife just yet—Tas will have to wait to get her hands on this one!  
     "Of course having plant teeth doesn't mean we have to eat all plants all the time, and having grain teeth doesn't mean it's all oats all the time, and the same goes for meat like chicken—or fish. Today we ate cold chicken in bread, and because we ate bread and chicken, you're growing strong muscles and healthy bones, you had energy to run like the wind all the way here, and you'll do even more things before the day is out thanks to the food in your belly." Seemingly without conscious thought, her little hands drift through the water toward her bare tummy. "We did take the chicken's life to help ours grow, but we did it so quickly she never knew what happened, and it was a long and happy life until then, you know that. Our farmers are very good. They make sure of that—and you certainly help! And during her life, the chicken took the lives of lots of beetles and other things–even plants–before we ate her, and when we're a couple of wrinkly old ladies and we die, the beetles can eat us, and the chickens can eat the beetles! It's very fair!" Dani finds this hilarious, and even though she's still red and blotchy from crying, she's laughing too. "While you're still alive, if you are grateful to the chicken–or to any animal you are from–because it means you can be happy and healthy and strong, you are doing it properly. You're not wasting her life or yours. You're part of a healthy circle. And are you grateful, duckie?" She nods. "You would never take the chicken's life without a good reason and leave her body wasted, would you?" She shakes her head solemnly, wide-eyed. "I didn't think so, considering how determined you were to save a fish someone else ate."  
     I scrunch up my nose at her as I finally get my sharp stone through the stomach and free the still-living silver fish from the deceased catfish' belly. It's moving a bit sluggishly and has a little of the catfish's blood and some slimy bread gunk on its head, but after a quick wipe I hold it up to her as a peace offering and, strangely enough, she seems to recognise it, and cradles it in her hands, absolutely delighted. I thank Andhir for protecting him after all, and Dwar for not holding his spirit too tightly. I kick backward, towing my giggling baby sister through the water back toward the swimming side of the lake. I feel—

     The slight chill that has set in as the light is beginning to go from the sky when we finally get out of the water has us clinging together for a little extra warmth. We pull on our dresses, mine only barely damp after several hours in the sun on the shore, and we start up the path, teeth chattering and arms linked. Halfway home we quite literally bump into our older brother, Ashwani.  
     "I've been looking all over for you two—come on."  
Madani and I look at each other, both wondering what could be so urgent; usually summer days are ours to do with as we please, as long as we take regular meals and we're inside the walls by dark. Waiting on answers, we set off after Ashwani.  
     Five years older than me and eight older than Madani, he cuts an imposing figure. Like me he favours our mother with his clear, terra cotta skin and jet black hair. The square shoulders and equally square jaw with the faintest trace of fuzz along both it and his upper lip-he is fourteen, after all-are nothing like mother or myself. I suspect father gave him those.  
     "Why are you bringing us home?" I venture as we enter through the gate at the head of the path.  
     "Grandfather is here. As is Mamó"  
     "Really? Both? In the same place?"  
     "Well Grandfather said he would be damned if he was going to miss his daughter having a new baby; did you know he was here when each of us was born? He's quite certain it's going to be another girl. A backup to our spare." With this, he turns and winks at Dani, who is the spare he's referencing. In our family it's always been the girls who inherit, making me heir to the holdings, and Madani the joked about "spare". The boys get a nothing but a home, an education, and a 'dowry' of sorts–not even the family name; Ashwani has father's last name, making him a Flanagan rather than a Ziadeh like me and our little spare, who was staring at the ground, a flush high on her cheeks. "I meant nothing by it, lil duck. You know that right?" He asks, scooping a nodding but still slightly sulky Dani up and onto his hip. It's a sensitive topic. She once said to me that sometimes she feels like she's second rate, being the spare. Frankly I'm a bit jealous. It means she doesn't have to be half as dedicated to our studies, as she's only learning them as a 'just in case'. She can afford to have other dreams and plans.  
     "As for Mamó, she insisted that mother would need a woman's help and a healer's touch when it came time for the birthing, and she said it would be pointless to hire one when she was the baby-to-be's grandmother and knew the trade as well as or better than any midwife we could scrounge up, so mother–pregnant as she is–is keeping them both entertained in the library and has asked me to come fetch you both and make sure you're presentable. It'll take at least a bit of the burden off of her if they can get a look at you."  
     "How can having Mamó _and_  Grandfather here be a burden?" Asked Madani. It was naive, but she looked euphoric, and I'd imagine having both our grandparents in one room sounded like a dream come true to her just then. They'd always been some of her favourite people in the world.  
     "Well," said Ashwani, setting Madani down to walk between us, "you know how the Little Castle and _all_ the holdings belong to mother?" Dani nodded sagely, curls bobbing. "And you know how Grandfather is mother's da?" Another nod. "Well they are very much alike, mother and Grandfather are. They know all the things that we are learning in our lessons and even more than that!" Her little eyes widened in awe as she came to terms with how brilliant they were on top of all the wonderful things she already knew to be true about them. "As for Mamó, she is our da's mother." Another little nod—she knows this much. "Mamó and da never had much time for the kind of learning we have to do in our lessons with all the sums and the books and the sitting up straight and dancing. They prefer a different sort of knowledge, the kind you get by actually _doing things_ instead of reading about how to do them, or having an instructor show you how to do them, and that means sometimes Mamó and Grandfather– well, they butt heads a little."  
This earns a questioning look from Madani. I think sometimes we forget that she's only six, as wise as she often seems.  
     "To butt heads is to argue a little–or a lot–to prove who is the better one, the smarter or wiser or faster-thinking one."  
     "Oh! Like the goats do, but with ideas!"  
     "Exactly-with their words and thoughts _inside_ their heads, instead of the horns that they don't have _on top_. They don't really hit their heads together!" She giggles at the mental image this has summoned as we come up onto the terrace. Ash holds a finger to his lips as we tiptoe through the main hall, past the cracked library door and down the hallway, reaching the stairs and heading up to change our dresses and tidy ourselves.  
     Madani and I put on fresh dresses, and slippers as well because up until that point we'd been barefoot all day, as is often the case during the summer. I splash some clean water on my own face, paying extra attention to the scrape under my chin from my tumble on the path, and wipe Dani's face down with a wet flannel. She still has a bit of muck around one eye and behind the ears and is just a little grimy everywhere else. She keeps up a constant steam of excited babble about grandfather, Mamó and the coming of our new brother or sister, _but hopefully a sister because that's what Grandfather wants and we get along so well, don't we Sar, and then I won't be the only spare_ —  
     I quickly run a brush through my stick-straight, black hair before pinning it up in a knot behind my head with a carved wooden comb, a name-day gift from Mamó. She'll be pleased to see me wearing it, I hope. I can't really brush Madani's curly hair—nobody can—or she'll turn into a red, woolly, sheep-looking nightmare, so I run wet fingers through it, pulling out occasional bits and pieces of weeds from the lake and arranging her curls best I can while she wriggles and grumbles, anxious to get downstairs.  
     When we're finally as close to presentable as we are liable to get with such short notice and after a full day of swimming, we emerge from our rooms and start down the stairs. We find Alby, our old tomcat, perched on the newel post at the midway point of the hand railing and he makes a graceful leap from the bannister to Dani's little shoulder. Without losing a step, she turns her head, looks into his eyes a moment as they touch foreheads, looks forward again, and giggles. We reach the bottom of the stairs, Alby still on his shoulder perch, grizzled tail flicking. I think very little of it now, as they've always had a very special, very close relationship and I am in a hurry to get down to the library and rescue mother, but later—

     The four of us make our way up the hallway to the library door, where we can hear the adults' voices drifting out. Ashwani steps up to the doorway and knocks on the half-closed door, then pushes it open without waiting for a response. We enter the library to find Mamó sitting tailor-style in the window seat above her slippers, mother in one of the large, cushioned reading chairs to the right of the window seat, and Grandfather standing to the left side. All three turn to face us as we come in. Smiles light mother and Mamó's faces, and we smile in return. I am truly delighted to see them. Even grandfather is almost smiling, one corner of his mouth sneaking up toward his cheek, seemingly without his notice or permission. Mamó climbs out of the window seat, stepping lithely over her shoes and coming over to embrace us all in turn, remarking over how we've grown and how handsome we're looking. She gets a peculiar glint in her eye when she sees Dani and Alby, but doesn't remark on the cat's unusual perch.  
     Mother takes a deep breath and braces her hands on her knees as though preparing to get up, but Mamó stops her. "Madhuri, dear—whatever you were about to do, let me take care of it. Unless it is to hug your children, in which case let them come to you." She's a small, intense woman with sharp eyes, deep wrinkles, soft features, a cloud of fine white hair, and a no-nonsense attitude. Even mother rarely says no to her. She's got an effortless, glowy kind of beauty that I think Dani may grow into someday.    
     "Well I wouldn't say no to a hug," mother says as we file over and hug her one by one. When Madani leans in to hug her, Alby hops to the arm of mother's chair and settles in like an unbaked loaf of bread dough, all four paws hidden by his belly. "But I was also going to get us some tea and a little snack from the kitchens. It's been some time since you've stayed with us–I'm not sure you'd know how to find what you'd need."  
     "I'll take the girls with me for guidance," Mamó tells her with a wink. "We'll be back before you know it. Girls?"  
     Ashwani is shaking Grandfather's hand and they're settling into chairs as Madani and I leave with Mamó. We go down the hallway, past the stairs and through the dining room, turning off into the pantry. I take Mamó through into the kitchen, while Dani rummages for tea leaves and some snack foods in the pantry. Mamó scoops water from the barrel in the corner into a kettle and puts it over the stove which has been banked low.  
     "Now, all this excitement with the baby coming has begun Madani's development. Has yours begun? Is there any sign that you've got a particular Gift, dear?"  
     "Well, I mean I'm pretty good at music. My flute teacher said I'm the best he's ever taught. He said that I've surpassed his pupils who are twice my age." I tell her, not as confused as I want to be–mostly in denial.  
     "Yes dear, I'm sure you're quite remarkable. But that's nothing that can't be accounted for with diligent practice, no? And I'm sure you're very gifted. But now we're talking about a _Gift_ , you understand? Your sister's is coming in sure and strong, so bright it's almost blinding. You've got a little glimmer," she says, poking me just below my ribs with one wrinkled finger, "I just don't know what it is." She takes me by the chin and turns my face from side to side, making a careful examination of my face. Just as I'm getting uncomfortable with the scrutiny, Madani walks in, laying the pouch of tea, some mangos, olives, dates, cheese and some small cakes on the counter. Mamó sets to cutting the fruit while I get down cups, saucers and a tray and Dani digs out spoons, small forks for the fruit, cream, sugar, fruit preserves, and anything else we could conceivably need.  
     "You know, it may never come in. You may not have a specific Gift like this one," she said, poking one knobby finger into Madani's side and making her squeal and jump sideways, nearly dropping the jam pot in the process. "If it doesn't, don't think you're no good. You could nurse that glimmer-your spark-into a little flame, maybe be able do small works, like your Mamó. Healing, blessings, midwifery, maybe some seeing—plenty of other good things. You could come into mindspeech as well," she says raising her eyebrows in a face that suggests that mindspeech is an outcome to hope for.  
     " _As for you_ , little one," she said turning on Madani, and scooping her up so they were tiny, freckled pixie-nose to craggy beak. "You are going to do a lot of learning, very quickly, very soon—and not the kind you're used to doing in your lessons, with a tutor. You'll be learning by doing. You have a special gift. Animals are your friends. Perhaps plants too—we shall see. But I don't know anybody who can do what you can do, and your Mamó knows a lot of somebodies, so that means there's likely nobody to teach you. You get to decide, and you get to learn what you can do, and what is right and what is wrong for you, and what is too much. My oh my oh my, this is going to be quite a journey, my little duck."  
I watch all of this dumbstruck. The water is boiling away to steam while Madani and Mamó carry on a quiet continuation of their conversation and I am..... That explains everything. I'm not a fool, honest—I know about Gifts, and I know that the Gift runs in da's family, which is OUR family, so I mean I always knew there was a chance, but you never really think that _capital-M Magic_ is going to come knocking on your front door, much less come waltzing right through it without so much as knocking and take up residence _IN_ your baby sister. It just doesn't happen like that. It just doesn't happen to _us_ —magic is for _other people_ , like healers and seers and water witches and the High Wizards (who Mamó insists are arrogant tarses, but I think maybe that's because they learned their magic by rote in the High School instead of by learning by simply _doing it_ , working it out the way everyone else does—the way she did).  
Mamó sets Madani on the counter and adds a dipper of fresh water, then another, to the pot that's boiled away to nearly nothing. Before long, it's hot again, and the tea is set, steeping in a pot. I carry the snack tray, Mamó gets the tea tray, and Madani carries Alby, who has somehow found his way back to us, and for whom Dani has found and shredded a sizeable portion of chicken in a small dish, also on the snack tray. Since Madani's load is significantly less spillable than either Mamó's or mine, she gets the library door for us, deposits Alby on the window seat, and pulls out the table for our trays.  
     "We thought perhaps you'd gotten lost," Grandfather observes, drily.  
     "Or decided to eat all the snacks for yourselves!" Ashwani adds.  
     "Oh, I'm sure that they had some very important catching up to do while they prepared our little meal. And thank you, by the way," mother says with the tiniest curl to her lips, her eyes gleaming. Ash and Grandfather add their thanks slightly sheepishly. Mother can put you in the right without ever scolding or raising her voice. It's just one of the million-and-one things I love about her.  
     "You're absolutely right, Madhuri dear. It's been over a year since I was here last. Your letters didn't mention that Sarani is becoming quite the little virtuoso! And Madani has such a Gift with animals." With this, she sends a wink to mother, Madani and me. "And those are just the big things. So many other little details don't make it into letters—they aren't important enough to spend the ink and paper on, or they just slip your mind when it comes time to write, but when I'm here we can tell it all! We simply had to catch up. And we prepared the food and drinks while we talked, honest," she said, smiling as she tapped her hooked finger to her lips and then raised her hand in the sign of Talis, goddess of truth and wisdom.  
     "All right," mother says in surrender, laughing as she pours tea for all of us. "No need to go bringing her into this!" We laugh with her. I don't think anyone could resist.   
     We all sit down, drinking and eating, talking back and forth between bites and sips. Mother puts a small spoonful of preserves in her teeth and sips her tea through it. It was the way her mother and father–Grandfather is doing the same–had taught her, and the way she taught me to drink my tea. Mamó and Ashwani stir sugar and cream into their cups, bringing the tea up to the beautiful colour of finished maplewood. Madani does neither. She will occasionally have cream but no sugar when we have tea, or drink it with jam like mother taught us, but tonight she was drinking her tea plain, and she looked to be in heaven.  
     "I'm so happy everyone is here," she says, setting her cup down and sitting back in the window seat. She slides out of her slippers, assumes a tailor's seat and closes her eyes. After a few moments, there's a scratch outside the window, which Dani opens, letting in the soft summer night, along with Sprog, and Tulip–two of our other cats–who hopped up onto the window seat and joined Alby. My sister gives a thorough petting to each cat in turn, starting with the petite, fluffy little marmalade striped bob-tail, Sprog, followed by the sleek, athletic white cat with one blue and one green eye named Tulip, and then finishing with the fluffy, mangle-eared grey Alby. As she finishes with the pettings, she sets the dish of shredded chicken down in front of them, initially holding an arm in front of Alby's and Tulip's chests, keeping them back so that little Sprog–only a few months old now–gets the chance to have a few good bites before the big cats join the fray.  
     The slightly surprised, but thoroughly self-satisfied look on Dani's face says that she's done something—maybe called them to her, like a dinner bell in their minds, and that before tonight it was not something she'd ever done–maybe even ever thought about doing–but she'd done it. I look around to see if anyone else has noticed, and briefly make eye contact with Mamó, but I can't tell if she saw what I saw without drawing everyone's attention to it, and they've all been absorbed in the conversation, and haven't even looked our way. I take a large gulp of my tea, disregarding the preserves, and as the heat settles low in my belly, I feel that same —

  Nn When tea is over, we say our goodnights and head up to bed. In our room, as I'm preparing for bed, Madani pulls a mango seed from he waist of her loin wrap and sets it on the wash stand before unwinding the wrap and sliding into her nightshirt. I am putting ointment on my chin in the mirror when she steps up to the basin alongside me to clean her teeth. I don't say a word. I have no clue how or when she slipped in in there, but it must have been important to her that she have it, so I leave it alone. Her teeth clean, I spin her so she faces away from me, comb in hand. I get all of her hair combed with a lot of water, a few prayers, and minimal pain and suffering on both of our parts, and I braid it into a crown, as tight and close to the scalp as I can make it without hurting her, just like Mamó taught me. I place a kiss on the top of her head, and gently swat her bottom with the comb as she skitters off toward her bed giggling. But not before grabbing her mango seed.  
     I turn to the wash stand and get a fresh stick and some powder to clean my own teeth, then I take care of my own hair. Out comes the decorative wooden comb and I give my hair a thorough brushing before it goes up and into a single, woven braid. I am tying a leather thong on the tail to hold it when I turn from the mirror, and see Dani is seated in a tailor's seat on her bed, little hands resting clasped in her lap. I can only assume the seed is within them.  
   N "What on earth are you doing, duckie?" I ask her, honestly wondering, as I settle onto the foot of her bed, sitting directly across from her.  
     "I kinda knew about the animals, but I think I proved it with the cats," she says, a sliver of emerald appearing as she cracks one eye to look at me. "I thought maybe Tulip and Sprog came because they smelled chicken, but did you know I didn't even really have to hold Alby and Tulip with my arms so that Sprog could eat first. I just asked them, 'stay' and I promised they would get food later, in my head. I bet I could have let go—but Mamó said to figure it out, and she also said maybe plants!" She cracks her hands to reveal a momentary glimpse of the seed– _plants, indeed_ –as the eye drifts closed again, long lashes coming to rest on a freckled fawn cheek. Her little upturned face is absolutely radiant with expected success. "Please, please, please," she murmurs, gesturing to her chest in a way that makes it clear she's entreating Surit, with her domain over growth and wilderness for help.  
     "Okay, but what are you trying to DO?"  
     "Make it sprout? Make it into a tree? Make it into a whole new mango? I don't know! I'm just TRYING," she says, determination rolling off of her tiny body. I settle into her bed, propping chin on hands and getting comfortable, watching as Dani's little brow furrows and her lips pucker, then pull to the side like they do when she's doing hard sums in her head or when her nose itches. She sits like that for so long I'm nearly ready to take the Tas-be-damned seed away, pitch it out the window, put out our lamps and go to bed. I'm reaching to take the seed when her verdant green eyes open wide and unseeing as she falls back on the bed. A soft gasp escapes her suddenly relaxed lips, but I hear a piercing cry inside my head. I fight the urge to cover my ears and dive forward, perching over her. My face is right next to hers and my hand up to her neck, searching for a pulse. I feel her tiny exhalations on my cheek before I find her pulse—she's alive, thank all the gods. I sit back on my heels, mind reeling and I look down at her.  
     How did I not notice this? On her lap—well, no, more IN her lap—is a distorted young tree, at least a few years old. It is roughly as big around the trunk as its little six-year-old creator's wrist. It's as long in the trunk as her torso, but it takes a sharp turn to the right where her little hands rest, slack. I realise that it must have tried to shoot straight up and exploded through her clasped hands while she was focusing. I peer closer and realise that its roots are wrapped around the cross of her little ankles and they sink deep into the down mattress. I climb from the bed and peer beneath, where I see the roots protruding from a gap in the boards of the bed and digging into the cracks between the tiles of the floor.  
Shaken, I run into the hall, turning and heading toward my parents' room. I lay my hand on the door, about to go in, when I realise that Mamó is in the next chamber, and she's not just our Mamó, but she can heal _and_ she knows about Gifts—about magic. And besides, mother is so very near to having the new baby. She needs rest.  
     I knock at Mamó's door, entering before I have an answer. She's in bed, propped up on an elbow an rubbing at her blue eyes with one knobbly knuckle. I don't trust my voice, so I grab her by the sleeve of her robe and start pulling her after me. I'm desperate to get back to my baby sister, and am sending up fervent prayers to every god who I think might even maybe listen: that she'll be alive when we get back, that Mamó can rouse her, that we can free her from the tree, that she won't have been damaged by the fit, that Mamó will HURRY UP!!! We reach the room not nearly soon enough, and she's exactly as I left her, but the tree has another year or two's worth of growth under its belt, and there are small buds on the branches. I am left standing in the doorway as Mamó darts to Madani's side far faster than I'd ever thought she could move.  
     "Silly duck—what have you done?" Mamó murmurs, bending to perform the same examination which I'd done prior to fetching her.  
     "I already—"  
     "Then we will be doubly sure that she is alive," she says, peering first at the bent trunk, then at the tree's root system, both above and below the bed. "Go back to my room and get my black satchel. It's in the bottom of the wardrobe. And hurry, Sarani."  
I ran quickly as I could manage and found the bag precisely where it was supposed to be. Hugging the soft, bulging pack tightly to my chest, I practically fly back down the hall to my room, where I could hand it off to Mamó. When I get back, the scene is much the same, but for the fact that the tree has grown still further, small mangoes on the branches, and Madani's colour is very poor; her lips are tinged grey, and I'm terrified.  
     I thrust the bag into Mamó's waiting arms, and take one of my sister's slack hands in my own. Mamó flops the bag onto the mattress beside Madani's hip and opens it, digging through and pulling out bottle after bottle of powders and liquids. She's still elbow deep in her satchel as she tells me to soak a flannel in the basin and wet down Madani's face with it. I get up, relinquishing my sister's tiny, limp hand, and do as she has asked. When I turn from the wash basin, I see her holding a wickedly sharp dagger, and both she and Dani are bleeding from a fresh cut across their palms.  
     "What are you—?" I ask, panicked. She was supposed to help her, not cut her open!  
     "Wet her face down now, dear. Nice and easy." I resume my perch beside" Dani and wipe her face down with the cloth, the simple instruction breaking my panic at seeing them both bleeding. As I'm wiping, she begins to stir, and some colour is returning to her face and fingertips. When her wide green eyes finally open, Mamó speaks again, this time to her. "Look at me, little duck. Can you feel the tree? It's sucking you dry, like a giant leech, Madani. I need you to cut off the blood supply. Stop giving it magic to grow, alright?" Dani's lips part to answer, but only a small croak escapes. Her brow furrows, frustration plain on her face, and she shakes her head. "That's alright. Think it loud, and think it my way– _think AT ME_ –and I will hear you. I heard you yell in my mind all the way in my room when the seed began growing, so I know you can do it."  
     My six-year-old sister can mindspeak. If I wasn't unbelievably jealous of her coming into her Gift before, I am now. Of course I instantly feel awful for thinking such a thing when I remember that her Gift has her bleeding, pinned to her bed by a tree that's sucking the life from her. But a tree that was a seed mere minutes ago... I shake off the bitter pang of jealousy and return to my ministrations. Mamó has been instructing her on how to disconnect herself from the tree while I've been lost in thought.  
     "I'll lend you some strength, if you need it," she says, shaking their joined, bloody hands, "You just need to put a barrier in between you and the tree. Really slam it down, or the tree will try to hang on, got it?" A nod from Dani. Her eyes scrunch shut as she tries to do as Mamó asked. A few moments pass, and I glance questioningly at Mamó, who shakes her head. After several moments more, Madani lets out a frustrated huff and opens her eyes.  
     "That's okay, little duck. Just really shut it down tight. Picture it like a door slamming, cutting it off from you. When you're ready, you try again; I'll do what I can to help you." After a few moments of staring at the ceiling, Dani shuts her eyes again, and her breathing evens out to the point where, were it not for the tree growing from her crossed ankles, she could almost be asleep. This time, it is clear when she is successful. The tree which had been steadily growing has ceased, and the leaves on the ends of the branches are wilted and sad.  
Mamó releases Dani's hand and binds both of their cuts with a clean bandage. She's got her knife in hand and has it to one of the tree roots when Dani sits bolt upright in bed.  
_No. No! NO NO NO!_  
     I clap my hands over my ears, but it doesn't help, because she's speaking directly into our minds. If the little yelp she let out when the seed began to grow was enough to wake Mamó, then I'd wager that this was enough to wake the whole house. I am at least partially right, I find, as Ashwani comes through the adjoining room to our room from his, a look of panic on his face and a hefty candlestick in hand—upside down, as though he is prepared to brain someone with it.  
     "Put that down, lad—we're fine," Mamó says, brusquely. "And as for you, young lady..." Madani looks away from Mamó's stern gaze, but this trick has never worked. She simply reaches down and grabs Dani's chin in two gnarled fingers, turning the stubborn little face toward her own. "I suppose we _could_ leave you here, stuck to the bed," Mamó nods, as if warming to the idea, "Yes, we could leave you here 'til both you _and_ your precious tree waste away. Its roots are wrapped up in, let's see, here....ankles, and," she bends lower, inspecting each layer through which the roots are passing. "oh, and mattress–so, cloth and feathers–wood from the bed frame and stone tile and plaster down on the floor here. It has nothing to eat and will wither soon enough. Unless you want to feed it on your magic again?   
     "That'll let it grow, cut off the blood to your ankles, kill your feet—then it can get some food the natural way, and when your feet fall off you can finally get free, eh? Well, actually...getting free may not be so easy as all that. The fleshy parts will die, certainly. We may have to break the long-bones to free you, though." Dani pales. "Not that anyone is going to want to spend much time with you once you're free. Not because you'll be crippled–I know some delightful cripples, dear–but because you're going to smell awful. You'll have been doing the necessary in your bed and all over yourself for ages, pinned down by those roots and stuck beneath the branches. I doubt the smell would ever really come out. Sarani will have to move rooms, people will stop wanting to bring you food because it'll smell so awful in here. You'll have to rely on your tree's mangos for food, and you'll have to put it through a flowering season every few weeks. Maybe all that people manure will help a little with feeding it, but you'll be out of magic—and feet—in a month or so. You see where this is going, duckling? I need you to let me cut you free." Mamó releases her chin and Dani looks away again, nodding. "Alright then." She bends with the knife and starts to cut.  
     It takes ages to free the trunk from the roots, and then the roots from the bed. Some of the roots seem to be glued to Dani's skin, and pulling them free is a painstaking and painful ordeal, leaving raw, red stripes, but we get it done. I suspect she will have scars twining around her lower legs for the rest of her life, but she will _have a life_ , which is what matters.  
     "You nearly died. You realise that, don't you?" Mamó says, and you can't miss the fear and anger behind the words. Getting a firmer handle on her emotions, she moves on. "You set no limit, you silly little duck. You must set limits–starting small and getting larger as you go–or you will kill yourself, as you nearly did tonight," Mamó tells her, rubbing a pungent ointment into her ankles. "I know I said you _get_  to figure this out in your own, as though it would be some grand adventure, but in truth,  _you have to_. You _must_. If you don't, the consequences could be awful. So move slowly. Do not simply say 'Grow,' or it will grow and grow and grow until you have nothing left to give it. You will have a beautiful tree, surely, but you will be an empty husk, not around to see the lovely thing you made. Tell it 'Grow into a seedling a hand-width tall,' or 'Grow two years' growth cycle,' or 'Grow until your first fruiting,' or another set, achievable thing, starting with the smallest, ensuring you can do that, and then moving on, you see?" Dani nods, looking sheepish, but grateful all the same. "And for the love of all that's holy, have your mum get you a meditation tutor. It's another lesson, I know, but you could use the control. It wouldn't hurt you to attend either, Sarani," she says, glancing over her shoulder at me.   
     When all the patching up is done, Ash carries Dani to my bed–her mattress is ruined, after all–and I am crawling in beside her when our father comes barging through the slightly-open door.  
     "Mum?" He calls, looking around our room somewhat frantically–certainly more panicked than I've ever seen him—as his wild, wide green eyes skip over the disaster of Madani's bed that is all feather and fabric and splintered wood before coming to rest on his mother.  
     "Liam? What on earth—" Mamó says, as she finishes gathering up the scattered bandages, ointments, powders and other remedies from Dani's bed and into her bag, then swings it over her shoulder. There is a restrained urgency about her now, like a dog told to sit and stay while a platter with a chicken, freshly roasted, is carried right past their nose. She looks at him more closely, and says, "My dear, darling boy, what are you doing up and about? It's late—you ought to be in bed!  
     "I could say the same of _all four of you_. Now, please put the children back to bed, ma, and then Madhuri and I will be needing you in our room." This earns a questioning glance from all around, but none of us dares ask. "Yes," he says, seemingly reading our minds, "it's time. The baby comes tonight, Gods willing the labour is short. Mum?"  
     "I'm coming dear. I'll be needing Sarani to come with me, though, to lend me some strength. I just gave a good deal of it to your youngest child. Although she won't be your youngest for much longer, eh, little duck?" She prompts, and Dani, who is flat-out exhausted from having used up her entire reserve of magic in a matter of minutes just gives a weak smile and a weaker nod, before her eyes drift shut.  
Ashwani stays with Madani and tucks her in as Mamó and I follow father out the door and up the corridor to my parents' room. Mother is lying on her back, her bottom scooted down to the foot of the bed, legs hanging, and her head and shoulders are propped up on pillows. Across her belly and thighs is a blanket woven with symbols invoking Surit, the moon, protector of girl children at one end, her twin brother Sanit, the sun, protector of little boys at the other, and Adol, goddess of love and procreation in the centre, across the swell of baby. I sit to mother's left at the edge of the bed, taking her hand in one of mine and fingering the fringe on the Surit edge of the birthing blanket as Mamó has her place her heels up near her bum and peers between her legs.   
     "Well, I can see the very top of the baby's head _just_  beginning to peek through. When was the last spasm?"  
     "It's been a few minutes," mother answered, looking at da, who was crawling across the bed to take up a position to her right, holding one hand and stroking her raven-black hair behind one ear. "Before Liam left to get you, I think."  
     "And when was the first?"  
     "I had my first before tea, but the spasms were gentler and farther apa—oh!" Mother's damp brow furrows and her cHun curls toward her chest for wjat feels like forever before she lays back onto her pillows and picks up right where she left off. "—farther apart, and my waters hadn't come, so I wasn't worried."  
     "You sent Liam for me once the little flood came?"  
     "No, I waited through as much as I could, until things got moving faster and it felt like the baby was down and nearly ready. Then I woke him and sent him to find you." Mamó shakes her head at this.   
     "You are a stubborn, stubborn woman, Madhuri. I could have been helping with the pain for hours! Okay. Sarani, I need you to come give me a hand now." I hold out my free hand palm up, looking away and bracing for the pain I'm certain is about to slice into it, thinking that she will need to cut me, as she did with Madani. She seems to understand my fear, and responds with reassurances. "I don't need blood contact, dear—skin to skin will do. The only reason I needed to cut palms to work with Madani is because I needed to exert my own influence over her while she was unconscious. I gave her power, yes, but I could have done that just by holding her hand normally. I also put a small dam in the flow of magic between her and the tree, slowed things down a bit, helped her move her own magic around. If I'd wanted to shut the flow off fully for her, it'd have been some complex blood magic, but I didn't have time to do that then, and frankly I don't have time to explain it now; I need you to come put your hand on my arm, my neck, my ankle–even an ear will do–anywhere you can find some of Mamó's skin to hold tight to," she tells me, all so quickly I barely have time to take it in. Still, I do as I'm told, and scoot to the foot of the bed, fight the temptation to grab hold of her nose–she did say anywhere–and instead slip my hand under the collar of her night shirt and grab hold of Mamó's pale shoulder.  
     "Good. Now picture a light at the middle of you, right at that spot under your heart, where your ribs open up—where secret and laughs live. When you find it, it's probably going to be flickering or hard to grasp, but I need you to gran hold of it, pull a little thread out of it, and feed it down your arm and into Mamó's chest, alright?" She asks. It takes several tries. I can see the glowing ball, but it's _slippery_ and it sparks and flares at odd moments, which makes it hard to get a good hold on a lighted piece. Eventually I manage, but mother has had two more belly spasms while I've been trying and is in the midst of the third when I get the end of the thread into Mamó's chest. "Thank you, sweet girl," she says, peering once again under the edge of the blanket. I look as well, wanting to see my new sibling, but I don't see anything that looks like a baby.  
     "The top of your new baby brother or sister's head is nearly free," she says, reaching up to the join in my mother's legs, and presumably touching the baby's half-freed head. "Ah!" She says, winking at me, leaning in to whisper in my ear, "A new baby sister for you. A wilful one too." Aloud, she says, "Now comes the hard part—her shoulders."  
     "Her? Her?! Her! We've got another girl! " Da is laughing and looking into mother's eyes. She winces and then kisses him, and because he's so happy, and smiling so largely, she kisses his teeth. Oh, I am delighted! I know Ash wanted a brother, but I love having Madani so much—two baby sisters will be twice as good!  
     "Oh, a girl! You know they say good bulls sire cows, Liam. This will be our Ilani. I can't wait to meet—" mother's thought is cut off as we get to that "hard part" Mamó warned us about. Da shifts the birthing blanket a bit so that when they have the new baby–Ilani!–out, she'll lay in Surit's embrace. Mother lets out a low grunt of pain as _fire cuts across my lower belly_ —  
     No, wait—it's _her_   _belly_. A spasm hits, and as Ilani's tiny shoulders try to come free, _a bolt of pain arcs from my right hip to my left_.

* * *

     I open my eyes.


	2. A Rude Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarani is slowly learning and starting to come to terms with what's happening to her. But it's kinda gross. Sorry.

* * *

     I open my eyes and I find myself lying in my bed. My shutters are flung wide and I can smell the spring air. My head is pounding, and as I groan and my hand flies up toward it, my fingertips just grazing a bandage before my arm's progress is halted as I'm grabbed by the wrist. I groan again, flopping my arm onto my belly in defeat. Perhaps I don't need to touch that ache so badly. The second my hand hits, I let out a high-pitched cry and withdraw it, then bring it back to probe more carefully at the area, fingertips dancing across the painful region like a spider's nimble legs. The whole span of my lower abdomen, my right hip, and the top of my right leg are bandaged and very tender.this?  
     I turn my head to the side, fairly certain I know who I'll find. Once the white-blind pain of turning my head has cleared and the room has stopped dancing, I see that all four of my siblings are in the room, as is my brother Ashwani's wife, Leah and their son, Nolan. Ash—much older and broader now than he'd been in that fever dream, or memory, or whatever it had been—is holding my two-year-old brother Hani on one hip and year-old Nolan on the other. He is standing behind Leah and Ilani, who is no longer in mother's belly–or in the process of emerging from it–but here, and near grown at 13. Both sit on Dani's bed, as Leah rolls up bandages and sets our medicine kit to rights while Ilani is eating from a tray of food that I have a sneaking suspicion was, at one point, meant for me. As for the one who kept me from poking my brain out through a broken skull, Dani—grown again as well, to the 19 summers she'd had before the dream—is sitting in our desk chair, pulled close to my bedside.  
     "What in the world happened?" I ask my sister groggily, not able to remember doing anything that could have done this kind of damage.   
     "What's wrong?"   
     "What's happening? What happened? You're–you're not—" My words failing, I try to hold my hand up at her six-years height, but my arm wobbles like an entranced cobra, so I drop it to the bed again.   
     "Don't you remember?" Dani asks. I shake my head. "What _can_ you remember?"  
     "I remember that we were going to feed the fish–I mean, _you_  were going to feed the fish–and then _we_ were going to have a swim." She nods. "I just, I was...and you—" Dani cuts me off.  
     "I _was_  feeding the fish," she says, "and you went to dive into the water—and so you did. Problem is, we haven't really been swimming yet this year, or done much of anything at the lake since winter's end, so we had no way to know the dock had rotted out toward the end where you stepped. It was slicked with water and moss in a few places too. I think you just slipped, and then your toes went through a bit and you broke some of the bones in your foot and lower leg." The pain in my head and belly had been so bad that the ache in my foot, which I now notice is elevated on a pillow and swollen to twice its usual size, didn't even register. As I take this in her explanation continues, "You also didn't get the angle you must have intended for your jump–likely because of the foot business–because you hit both your head and your lower belly on some of the stumps or stones under the lake. I think you may have broken a bone in your hip as well. It was grinding when I was holding you out of the water. You'll live, although for a little while we weren't so sure, I just don't think you'll be up and about for a little while."   
     I look up at the ceiling, processing, and realise I'm looking out of one eye—the other has swelled shut, or gummed shut with blood, or something else. This doesn't distract me for long though, and soon I'm back to my horror. I don't think I've truly been idle in my life. This convalescence is going to be awful. I don't really pray, but I send one up to Sanit–one that's surprisingly coherent considering my broken head–because healing lies in his domain, and it looks like I'm in for a long run of it.   
     "I'm sorry Sar—" Dani says, "I should have been paying more attention. I did what I could when I reached you after you hit, but I'm no people healer and if I'd funnelled all my energy into helping you I'd have fainted and then we'd probably both have drowned; if I'd been paying attention then you never would have jumped—I should have known the wood was rotted, I could have warned you..."  
     "No, little duck, you couldn't have. How were you supposed to know the dock was rotted? And even if you had known and told, I—" I pause to swallow the cottony texture that's coating my tongue, wondering how long it's been since I've had a drink, "—I wouldn't have listened. I'd've thought you were just trying to protect your precious fishes and I would have jumped anyway. You can't blame yourself for this. It my fault for not looking before I leapt. It's da's fault, maybe, or the groundskeeper for not keeping up with dock repairs, but the Little Castle is so big that I don't think any one person can keep up with it all, even if that person works as hard as da or Mr. Payeng do. But as fault goes, it's certainly not yours." She still looks upset, and almost sheepish, but she seems a bit better. "How long have I been here? Like this?"   
     "Two days. You roused enough to drink a bit–broth, water and some juice, some medicinal tea–but mostly you've just slept. We weren't sure you'd wake at all, WHAT with your head the way it was, but you have, so there's no use dwelling on it now. I'll bring you some more broth." I start to object, tell her that my belly would like something more substantial, when she says, "I don't want any complaints. You need to start slowly after going two days on an empty stomach."  
     She lays a gentle kiss on my cheek, below the bandaging, and rises to go fetch the promised soup. Each of my siblings follows in turn, blanketing me in gentle affection before leaving the room. I am still staring at the shut door, which is dancing like a candle flame in my vision, long after they're gone.

* * *

     Should I live to be as old as Mamó–which will be highly unlikely if I have many more days like the one of my accident–I will never forget the hellish monotony of my recovery. Even if I never have another accident so long as I live, I may still die of boredom before reaching old age. I've been lying in this bed for over a month, and I'm bored stiff. My siblings used to visit, and we played some games of cards and pachisi and they'd read to me for a while, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly, especially because I need so much sleep to heal. I've been trying to keep myself entertained in the lulls while nobody is visiting, but the break in my skull has left me mind-numb, and I can't focus my eyes well enough to read more than a few sentences in one go, or concentrate on solitary card games, and I hate solitary games anyway. What is the point if I'm not competing against anybody? Nobody cares if I cheat, and every time I win, I lose as well, because I have to beat myself to do it! So instead, I've been doing a whole lot of nothing.   
     All my meals have been brought, and eaten in bed. Ash, Dani, da and Asam, one of the better healers we have, have been working in pairs, sliding a pan beneath my bum so that I can do the necessary without having get up and do more damage to the healing break in my hip. I tried once to get out of bed and sit in a seat with the pan in it, but the grinding and pain in my hip stole my consciousness, and when I woke I was back in bed, and being told that I wouldn't be leaving it for some time.   
     Thanks to Asam's attentiveness, the break has finally stopped grinding the way it did at first, and at least with their help I don't have to wear napkins or lie about in my own filth, although as greasy and stringy as my hair is, and as stiff and foul as my sheets are fast becoming, I'm not sure it would make that much of a difference. The rough bed-baths I've been able to take have only helped so much, and just now I'm finding it less than surprising that I've had no company today. They joked, not so long ago, about putting me in a barrow and wheeling my aching bum straight into the lake. At the time, I laughed with them, and said, 'Not on your lives!' but now? Gods do I stink.   
     I pity Madani, who crawled into her own bed across the room a few hours ago. I've had time to grow accustomed to my own stench, but she doesn't have the same smell-blindness, and falling asleep has been quite the chore for her lately. It's been difficult for me as well. Over the past several days, as the pain has decreased, it's been replaced by an equally nasty sensation. 

* * *

     I itch. Oh gods, do I itch. It's like a burn and a tickle so closely tied that I don't think they could ever be separated, and the cursed feeling is worming its way down deep, deep into my marrow. I lay my hand over the area–far bonier than it used to be, as all the muscle that used to lie beneath the skin has been wasting away as I lay here for weeks on end. I press gently with my palm, then a bit harder, looking for some sort of relief. I don't think I dare scratch; if I start now, I won't ever stop. I'm vain about my nails, sharp little ovals at the tips of my fingers and I can just picture it, if I were to let myself start. The way they would peel back the itching, burning skin on my hips and bury in my flesh, ripping muscle and tangling up in my veins, itching and digging deeper still. I'd flay myself with my own fingers. And what then? I doubt the itch would be gone. So, no. I won't be scratching anything—I cant.   
     It's driving me mad. I don't really pray often, but just now I'm willing to make an exception. Several exceptions, actually—a few dozen, perhaps. I am lying in my bed sending up fervent prayers to every deity whose name I can currently recall—those of my mother's people, those of my father's people, even those of the caravaners, tradesmen and tale-spinners who sometimes pass through our holdings—even if itchy young women lay nowhere in their purview. I want to howl like a wolf or shriek like an eagle, or even just give a proper voice to all of these prayers, lend them a bit more legitimacy; do the gods still listen if you don't say it out loud? I'm just going to have to settle for an internal scream, one I'd like to lend my full voice to but can't, really, or I'll wake Madani, and she gets so little sleep lately. I let my mind-racket go on and on and on and on as my body goes rigid and my throat tightens with the ghost of a real scream, my fingers clawing at the sheets rather than my hips, thighs, and belly. Only the merest squeaking whimper escapes my lips, and I'm proud of myself for staying as quiet as I have throughout this waking nightmare. Not quiet enough though, apparently, because Madani tosses her head and promptly settles, one soft curl coming loose from her braids and catching on her chapped lips. She's drifted back into sleep, though, and I have no way of knowing whether it was the noise or a dream which disturbed her. Keeping an eye on Madani, nonetheless, I bite down on my lip to keep any more sounds from escaping.   
     Looking at Dani in the moonlit room, I just take in my little sister's appearance, so different from my own. We are, according to many, a study in opposites, despite sharing mother and father both. Madani is younger and smaller than me, and I can see her tiny figure plainly outlined by the moonlight. She's smaller in build even than Ilani, who is a full six years younger than she. I am, much to my dismay, built larger than they are—both taller and broader–though Ilani may still catch up to me; most 13 year olds still have a little growing to do. Dani is deceptively delicate looking, especially when she's sleeping like this. Her high cheekbones, full lips, and soft golden skin with a smattering of freckles appear so much more fragile and childlike when there's no untamed expression on her face, no words coming from her lips, no fire in her large eyes, now shut in sleep. Her hands look like birds' wings, light and feathery, one splayed across her chest, one across her cheek. I'm older, taller, broader, darker all around than she is. Plainer as well.   
     My skin is a deeper shade than hers, more of a dark amber like mother's, rather than her pale gold, like the seashells that sometimes make their way here through the Godspine from the Andrid Ocean. My eyes are such a dark brown they may as well just be flat black, whereas hers are always some vibrant, beautiful mix of different browns, greens, oranges and other bright colours. Masses of auburn curls are her crowning glory, though they lie plaited tight to her head just now to prevent her waking up beneath a giant matted bird's nest. Da and Mamó gave her those, along with all the rest of her features. She favours him so strongly you'd hardly suspect she was mother's at all. Whereas I favour mum do strongly you'd never suspect I was anything of da's, or anything of Madani's either.   
     I pull my own braid–straight, coarse and black as coal–between my teeth and bite down as another fierce wave of burning itch hits me. I wonder if I just need to bathe properly. Maybe it's all the sweat and grease and dead skin itching away at me, giving my bum dandruff. Maybe I just need a proper scrubbing. Maybe I've gotten a flea from one of our mangy cats (although I'd never suggest as much to Dani) and maybe the itching burn is something as simple as flea bites. Maybe I'll take Ash up on the wheelbarrow taunt, let him dump me into the lake; it'd probably work if it's as simple as fleas or grime. Maybe I just need to—this maybe game isn't enough of a distraction! I hold my hands before my face, focusing on keeping them there, keeping my vision clear. Focusing on the nasty taste of my weeks-unwashed hair between my teeth. Focusing on anything but this _damned itch_. Only too late do I realise I have shifted my focus from my raised hands to the thick, pungent flavour of greasy hair and let my vision drift. I've lost track of my right hand. As it turns out, this hand has crept beneath the covers and...

 

* * *

     Scratching an itch is supposed to be satisfying—not like this. There is no relief from this scratching. I can't even feel it initially, and then only a dull pressure like scratching overtop of a boot or heavy leathers. The moment I realise what I'm doing, I yank my hand back up above the line of my blankets. As my hand comes out, a sheet of skin roughly the size of my palm comes along with it. It slaps wetly down onto my neck and I only just manage to avoid shrieking as the strange mass impacts the still-intact skin at the base of my throat. I peel it up off of my collarbone and hold it up in the moonlight that's coming in through my window. It's skin, alright—my skin. A whole, big chunk, with rough edges, just...just hanging from my fingertips. I give it a sniff; It doesn't smell any worse than the rest of me does just now. I mean, it's no bouquet of roses, don't get me wrong–I haven't properly bathed in six weeks–but it's not some putrid piece of rotten flesh. It's just....skin. My skin. And an awfully big piece of it, that isn't attached to me anymore.   
I want to lift my covers and look, but I don't really want to look. What if I can see my muscles? My veins? _My bones?_ See them, still angry and healing under there. Part of me just wants to reach back under without looking and see if I can painlessly peel another piece of my skin off, get an entire collection skin. Getting this piece off didn't hurt a bit. Perhaps, if I peel enough, I can piece it back together like a puzzle. Or, if I peel a big enough piece without tearing it, I can tan it and turn it into something useful. It's certainly not doing anything of use right now; it's hardly even attached anymore. It's just itching and itching away and driving me mad. Or maybe it's the lack of sleep and company that's done that. Or maybe the broken head and scrambled brain. Whatever did it, I think I've finally lost it. I let loose a giggle, picturing a coin purse made from the skin of my hip, my leg, my bum. So fashionable, a little scandalous—an arse wallet!   
My thoughts come back around to what's underneath. Because the skin peeled off of something, left _something_ behind, exposed. Something that's still down there, itching me like crazy. I lay my hand down–over my sheet this time–as the most horrific thought occurs to me. It's getting warmer and warmer every day of my convalescence, and the flies have been buzzing about my stinky bedclothes like I'm a ripe mango, or a fresh roast chicken. What if they got into the open wound on my hip before it healed? What if they laid eggs? What if that itch is the squirming crawl of a million maggots? What if they eat my flesh until I don't have any leg left? Or give me some hideous, blood rotting infection? What if it's not maggots at all, but some other little tiny critter, chewing away under my skin? Oh gods, give me strength.   
I let out a little growl, rip a piece from the cleanest area of my top bed sheet–down by my feet, where it wraps around the bottom of the bed, so it hasn't had a chance to touch my sweaty nasty self–with my teeth, and wrap my hip and thigh as tight as I can while still letting blood through to my foot. I don't know what else I can do tonight but try to sleep. I have a tonic to help me do just that, and it's sitting on the chest beside my bed. I take three swallows—one more than I probably should, but this damned itching isn't going to let me sleep otherwise—and my eyes quickly grow heavy as the room begins to spin. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent long stretches in hospital, immobile when nobody bothered to wash my hair or help a girl out beyond a quick wipe down with a wash cloth every other day. It gets nasty fast. And for that I am sorry. 
> 
> (Still willing to beta-whore for the secret of indenting)


	3. Coming Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The healing process is not going as smoothly as Sarani had hoped. Not by half.

     I wake up to water splashing, the soft rush of a wooden comb through hair—the sounds of Madani preparing for her day. Sunlight is just creeping in through the window. Asam should be here soon to help me do the necessary and perhaps I can have her address my shoddy bedsheet bandage job. Dani is fully washed and dressed already and is bringing me powder and a root for tooth cleaning when Asam finally knocks and lets herself in, cheery and bright-eyed as usual, even at dawn. Just before she can shut the door behind herself, Dani slips quietly out past her.  
     I clean my teeth as Asam gathers water and some flannels for washing, as well as my toileting tray. I undo my wrap under my covers, the itch returning in full force as I do. Once I'm unbound, she slides the pan under me. She is smaller than I am–roughly Dani's height–but now that my bones are fusing back together and I can help, it's a one person job to get the pan beneath me, and she removes it again when I'm finished. She then helps to strip my nightdress off over my head, and we get about the business of washing, beginning with my face, which I can take care of, and moving downward. When she reaches the horrid burning area, more skin lifts away with the rag, though she isn't scrubbing terribly hard. On the bright side, the itch is dulled by the washing. She seems alarmed by the peeling skin though, looking about for more light, as the early dawn light through the open shutters is all we currently have, and the hip she's looking at is facing away from the window.  
     She grabs and unshields our lamp, muttering what sounds like a curse to ignite it and taking a closer look. Her hand runs along the itch and her eyes grow wide. She does a quick gesture–sketching a sunburst on her skin with a nail–entreating Sanit's healing aspect. I see a faint sheen reflecting back from the area; I'm fairly certain the nacreous nastiness that's exposed is something I've seen before–fascia, based on that shine, as I've ripped the skin off my ankle and seen the silvery layer beneath, and I don't much care to see that again. Right now I'm mostly impressed with the lamp lighting. I knew she healed, but that was something else. I wonder if she can teach me to do that?  
     "Does this hurt?" She asks, running her fingers over the area again, pressing and rubbing a bit, then pulling a finger back with another long strip of old skin on it. I shake my head  
     "Just itches, deep down," I tell her. "Could you teach me to do that?"  
     "Okay. Wait, do what?"  
     "The lamp thing."  
     "I'm sure I—don't you have a tutor...? This isn't really the time Sarani. Is this painful?" She asks, trailing a well trimmed nail down the patch of silvery stuff. I shake my head. I barely feel it.  
If Asam is acting like this, then I think I may be right about that fascia stuff, and this is likely pretty serious, which means it's probably going to take a long time to heal. Just what I need. More bed rest. I'm considering how painful this is going to be, once I can finally feel something other than this fierce itch, as the wide-eyed healer paces to the water basin, soaks a fresh flannel, squeezes out enough water that it's no longer dripping, and then slaps the sodden thing onto the area, tying it down with my sheet strip from the night before.  
The relief is near instantaneous. I don't know what Asam has done, or what was in that basin, but I think I will be grateful for as long as I live. I open my mouth to ask her–to thank her–but she's fumbling dumbly at the door handle, then suddenly she's halfway out the door, the same stunned look on her face. I'm not sure I care to take any closer of a look at what put that dumb expression there, so I let the wrapping be (why mess with success, after all–it's stopped the gods damned itch) and lay back on the bed. It's been long enough that I've dozed off and my rags are beginning to dry by the time she gets back, Madani in tow.

* * *

     "...and the fish are fairly ordinary, for the most part."  
     "For the most part?"  
     "Well," Dani says, "Sar seems to think that the more time I spend with an animal, the smarter they get, which means they're a little brighter than your average fish–we have proper little chats–but they're not some weird mystical fish and they're certainly not contagious or infectious or anything. You can't _catch_ fish." This earns her a sideways look from Asam. "I mean, you can _catch fish_ , but you certainly can't catch _fishiness_."  
     This conversation is going wholly over my head. I can't fathom a purpose for it, or for Dani's return. I'm just lying, waiting for answers, as Ashwani appears at the door, towing a wheelbarrow behind him. It would appear they're finally following through on that old joke or threat or whatever it was. Perhaps the fish chat was just to ensure the open fascia business wouldn't get infected? It seems sensible enough. Dani is their best friend, after all—she'd know if they were clean, and if it were safe to dump me, open wound and all, into the lake with them.  
     "So, we're finally going to the lake then?" I ask, sitting up. Nods all around, as Asam tosses me my nightgown and Ash pulls the barrow in through the door. "I don't suppose we could get my sheets changed out while we're down there, could we?"  
"That should be doable," Dani doesn't meet my eyes as she tells me this, just stares at the filthy sheets and gives a little smile as Ash scoops me up and Asam tosses my pillows into the bottom of the barrow so I have something soft to rest on. Dani strips my stiff, months-old sheets from the mattress, bundles them under an arm and carries them along with us.  
     It takes some careful manoeuvring to get the barrow down the stairs, and Ash does himself credit by how gentle he is about the whole business. We wheel down the halls, a bit more quickly now that we're on level ground again. One more gentle bump from the terrace down to the path outside, and we're truly on our way. I get fresh air-and fresh bugs–through my open window shutters, but I haven't had a proper outing in months. Not since my accident have I had the sun or a calm breeze to caress my skin, nor have I seen anyone other than my family and Asam, but today I see Syana and Myren Asari riding two horses out from the stables toward the woods for some exercise, and we see the groundskeeper, Jadav, doing repairs on the old gate in the low wall that separates the forested area from our home and keeps livestock and pets from wandering in, and deer and other wild things from coming out of the woods. I've mainly visited the stables to visit my own mount, rather than the Asari twins, and while Syana is glad as ever to see me, Myren looks a bit annoyed by the delay, but I'm so happy to see someone who isn't one of the same handful of people that I still hold up their ride for far too long with some idle conversation. By the time we part, it no longer seems they mind–probably because they're not close enough to be able to smell me–and when we part ways, they leave me with wishes for fast healing and a smile on my face.  
Jadav looks a little distracted when we see him. He won't meet my eye. Perhaps the gate repair is particularly complex, and he's trying not to forget what he'd been doing when we interrupted.    
     That's what I'm thinking when he says, "I, um, I repaired the dock, Sarani—rebuilt whole stretches of it. I am so sorry that I hadn't done so sooner, or this—" he says waving his arms at my low position in the barrow, "—this never would have happened." He looks miserable. I have known Jadav my whole life, he is like an uncle to me, and I can't stand this, so I tell him what I've been telling myself–and Madani, when she's willing to listen–for weeks now.  
     "Whoever was first on that dock was going to fall through. If that had been some unlucky hart, okay. It could just as easily have been you or da going to check if repairs were needed, or Madani trying to get a new angle on feeding her fish friends, or one of the Asari or Dixit kids coming out to catch some fish. But we were never going to know it had rotted over the winter until it broke. I drew the short straw, and that is that. I was running blindly, like an idiot–if I had walked out, I would have nothing more than a scraped up leg that had gone through the dock. I got taken down a few pegs, but there is no blame to be had by you or anyone but me, for not looking where I was going, and the trickster, for suddenly deciding I could use a change of pace."  
     "Well, I suppose if that's how you feel—" he says, and I find myself thinking he can't have felt terribly bad if it took a single repetition of it to have him smiling at me again where I've been telling Madani the same thing almost daily for a month and she's still distraught, but I quickly set it aside. It's too beautiful a day to be worried over it.   
     "It is."  
     "Well, alright then," he says with a wink, a smile on his face and his hands raised in surrender. He knows full well how stubborn I can be. And besides, I think that I may have gotten my point across well enough, because he's actually looking at me as he opens the gate for us with a grin and a very exaggerated bow.

* * *

     We bump gently down the path to the lake's clearing, now far more lush and verdant than last time I was here. Ash pushes me down toward the water and makes like he's going to run down the dock and dump me in. I'd almost believe him, if we didn't have so many witnesses. Instead, he strips to his underclothes and lifts me out of the barrow. Asam and Dani strip as well. They walk into the water of the bathing alcove, with me still in my nightgown, the fLindy thing clinging to me as we get into water that's chest height for Ash, and would be for me as well, since we're about the same height, and up to Madani and Asam's necks. I'm half convinced Dani is standing on her toes to keep her mouth above the waterline when Ashwani sets me down. My feet touch the lake's silty bottom, and the weight settles gently onto my newly healed and still healing parts. My broken foot feels perfect–good as new–although I can't say it'll be as great when it's holding my full weight. There is a soft ache in my hip, but it gets quieter the more I move my legs and settle into being upright again. Ash dips under the water and out of sight.  
     I squeal and kick out when I feel his hand close around my ankle, but then I feel my nightgown ascending and I realise he was just trying to get the filthy thing off of me, so we could get both me and it clean. He surfaces as I raise my arms and he yanks it over my head and tosses it over his shoulder as Asam reaches down, unties and then unwinds the sheet strip binding the flannel to my side. She frees both, and adds them to Ash's bundle, and he swims for shore and my soaking sheets to get some laundry done while Asam and Dani help me wash.  
     First priority is my hair. It feels so good to clean it that I think I may scrub it again before we get out. Then, with a cloth and a soft brush, we set about getting the rest of me clean. I even scoop up some soft sand and scrub the flaky old skin off of my hands, feet and lower legs. I'm delighting in both the cleanliness and the freedom of movement so much that I don't even notice the missing itch. I'm so overwhelmed with good things that the sheer goodness of not itching escapes me for a moment, until I lay back on the water to float and both Dani and Asam's eyes go straight to the hideous silvery fascia whatever that is hanging about just below my waist. Dani comes around the side and cradles me like a baby, keeping me supported on the surface while also taking a closer look at the patch of open flesh. It's so strange to be cradled in the arms of my little–both physically and in age–sister. She pulls the brush over across the surface of the water, looking at Asam for permission. Asam nods, and Dani gently scrubs at the open area. I brace for pain. I brace for itch to return. I brace for...something that never comes. It feels just fine. It doesn't really feel like anything. I don't trust it, so I don't look. I watch Dani's damp curls bounce as she scrubs and leans in close for a better view. I watch the clouds shift in stripes and tatters. I feel soft nudges at my shoulders and back, and think Dani and Asam are sitting me up, so I right myself.  
I right myself right into a circle of fish, some of whom dart back as I bump them, but they all stay close—close to _me_. Even swimming with Dani, I never get this close to them. They never let me. Dani giggles and weaves her hand through a little cluster of scaly adorers.  
     "Well, what's the verdict, dear?" Asam is looking expectantly at Dani, who is looking at the fish.  
"Not their handiwork, they say. It's just as I told you—they couldn't have done this. They are, however, laying claim to her," my little sister says, as her hands dart around the fishes, and the fishes dart through her fingers and surround me. Asam's head is cocked to one side, and I know there must be a question on my face as well. "She's one of theirs now, they say. Not wholly surprising, considering, but funny—they never liked her much before. But you don't always have to like your family, every moment of every day, do you?" She says with a wink and a smile. I'm lost.  
"Wait, family? What, because I fell into their lake? Got hurt on their watch? Do they feel responsible? That doesn't—" I look at Asam for help, as it occurs to me then that, with her black hair and red-brown skin, she looks more like me than my own sister does. Family is a funny thing. "She's right," I tell Asam, "they don't even like me. I can't even feed them if I'm in the water! I have to toss my crusts in from the shore or the dock and then flee! We're adversarial at best. I broke my gods-damned bones trying to boulder jump into a gaggle of the dumb things just to harass them! We've been sharing this lake for over twenty years, and now— _now—_ we're supposed to be family? I've cut myself open on sharp stones, broken toes on large stumps, and hit my head in this lake before. I've spilled blood into the water here. I came up under the dock so suddenly once that I knocked myself unconscious and almost drowned in _their_ lake." I've turned from Asam and Dani and I'm speaking directly to the fishes now. "If that didn't make us family, then _this sure as hell doesn't!_ " I don't even have time to feel foolish for screaming at fish before my sister and my healer answer me.  
     "You're right. Falling in probably doesn't make you family. Otherwise they'd have a huge family of mostly bugs, whom they eat," my sister tells me with a calm smile on her face that is absolutely infuriating.  
     "And while that doesn't qualify you, these most certainly would seem to," Asam says, reaching out through the water and tapping the wound on my hip.  
     "What are you talking about? It's just a—a thing. I don't really know what kind of thing it is, that's your deal Asam, but it's not—" I throw my hands up in frustration, unable to find the words I need.  
     "Oh," she says, seeming honestly taken aback.  
     "Oh, what?" I ask her, not meaning to sound as hostile as I do.  
     "I thought you were handling this all very coolly, considering it made _me_ lose my footing for a moment, and I'm me. I'm a healer—we deal each day with bodies and Gift and the odd things they both do. You haven't looked at it yet, have you?" She is moving closer to me. I take a step back.  
     "I sicked up all over everything last time I saw that silvery white fascia stuff peeking out from under my skin. I figured vomiting in my wound would probably make your job harder. So no, I haven't looked. _Yet_." Both women look stunned. I guess ignoring one's own body is a rare and isolated skill set that neither of them possesses.  
     "Well, you're gonna look now," Asam says with a soft little smile.  
     "What didn't you get about the vomiting and the wound care and all the rest? I'm not looking."  
     "You _are. Now._ " Asam's gentle and cheerful demeanour drops, and is replaced by a forged iron, no-nonsense way of speaking, of holding herself. I've never been on the receiving end of this side of her personality. It's not a comfortable place to find oneself.  
     I swim in toward shore. The water level gets lower and lower in relation to my body, revealing my breasts, then my navel, then the fork of my legs. Having that larger amount of weight resting on my healed bones is uncomfortable, but it's not so bad that I can't support it. Perhaps, if I can come down here each day, or every other one, and walk about while the water holds most of my weight, perhaps I can get myself strong and sure on my feet again. I let my mind wander down this path, but am brought back by a hand on the shoulder from Madani and a sharp clearing of Asam's throat. Startled out of my reverie, I know I can't put it off any longer. I take a deep breath and look down. Then I look a bit closer.

* * *

     I knew from their reaction that fascia was the wrong guess, but _scales_? How does that even happen? It doesn't! It does not happen. People have skin. Fish have scales. Snakes have scales, but like a different kind of scales. Lizards have different scales too. People _don't have scales_ , and we _certainly_ don't just sprout them halfway through our lives! And not smack in the middle of a big patch of used-to-be-skin! If it ever happened— _which it doesn't!_ —it should happen under a god mark, those large ones that are huge and red or brown or purple, not in a place that is as unremarkable as skin's ever been. This is ridiculous! I don't know how they're handling this so calmly. I don't know how they thought I would handle this calmly. What's next, gills? That strikes me as a valid question, so I try to reel in the hyperventilating so I can ask it aloud.  
     "So, what comes next? Webbed toes? Fins? Gills? Am I going to have to move in with my new little _family?"_  I spit the question out a shade or two more viciously than I meant to, and I swing my arms through the water, clearing away my encircling family members–scaly ones and smooth skinned–and try to make for shore.  
     "All we really have are guesses, Sar. We don't really know what's happening. You could go full fish person. You could just have a single patch of scales hiding beneath your clothes all the time. You could go full fish person and be able to change back and forth from skin to scale at will, or with the moon, like those tiger-men and wolf-men in the histories and legends. This could be because of the lake or the fish-though they deny any part in the change–or because of the injury, or even a flare of your mostly-dormant Gift, and even that could have been triggered by the injury. We really don't know. We just have to wait and see."  
     I want more than just guesses! I'm picturing a scaly, fishy version of the tiger-men in the history and story books. That would be truly, truly awful. Especially if I couldn't control the change! I wonder if I'd have whiskers like the large brown catfish in the lake. Or if I'd just have stripes of black or be bright orange with a pointy little face like the little pallathi in the lake. Or maybe I'd get the huge lips or the bulging brain of one of the two kinds of silver fishes in the lake. This seems the most likely, considering the colour of my own scales, but I can't say I like the picture it's bringing to mind. And I can't say I am in love with finding out that my body is so very _not normal_. Who in the world would love with this turn of events? No one. And who would love me once they tried to cop a feel and came away with a handful of dead skin and flacking silvery scales? Any far off marital aspirations I may have had are rapidly vanishing. I wonder if I'd lay eggs instead of grow a full, round belly...

* * *

     The itch is slowly returning as my mind wanders and I drip dry in the warm air. It makes more sense now, the way it was happening. Scales aren't made to be dry, are they? Not the fishy kind, anyway. Maybe I'll have to move into the lake when the skin finally starts peeling on the rest of me. Asam's bandage was excellent this morning, and with a waterskin I could probably get out and about without too many problems, just re-wetting it when needed, but it doesn't seem practical for a full body. I'd look like a burn victim, or that poor fellow who got dragged behind his horse last fall, with bandages winding from head to toe. I don't much want to think about how complicated it's going to be over the next few months as this develops further— _if_  this develops further.  
     I dip down into the shallows, calming the itch, then kick out to deeper water. Dani and Asam share a look which I do my best to ignore, paddling out further, and occasionally pausing to swipe an arm or leg at the passel of fish I'm towing along in my wake. I know it's less than kind, and I'm not proud of it– _we're family now, after all_ –but I've taken swipes at my real siblings for less than this, and gods am I angry just now.  
     At my age things should be settled, not changing all over again. Nearly all of the expected and expectable changes have come and gone—I got taller, got breasts and my moon cycle, got the last of my siblings, got new lessons and new responsibilities on the hold, and I've had time now to settle into all those things. If I wanted one, I'm sure I could find myself a husband and move into a more private space, perhaps even one of the small outbuildings on the grounds of the Little Castle, and out of the room which Dani and I have shared since childhood—or I likely could have if I hadn't gone half fish—but that was only real change on the horizon. Just when I thought it was smooth sailing and I knew what to expect from here on in, this happens. And it's not even the broken bones or the ages spent bedridden that are getting to me. I could have finished up my healing and been back on my feet in the next week or two. Maybe not good as new, but good enough to do all the things I have to do, and most of the ones I would have wanted to do. Now even the next week is an open question. I have no idea what to expect, and I hate it. I don't think I've been this uncertain about my future in all of my life! I was to be the heir. Period. End of story. Is that even possible as s fish? My mind is a massive whirl.  
     I swim for what must be hours, and when I start to get tired, my body unused to exertion after all of that bedrest, laying back on the surface of the water and floating, running my fingertips across my newest addition, then picking back up when I've had a moment's rest. No one says a word to me, and it's not until around noon that I realise that none of us has likely eaten yet today, and while I've been too preoccupied to notice my own hunger, they likely have not. I've been horribly selfish keeping them here, and they've been too kind to say a thing about it. I just needed time to process a little bit. I paddle toward shore, and when my feet reach the bottom of the lake without a stretch, I begin to walk in instead, working muscles that need strengthening. At the edge of the water, Ash is standing with a clean nightdress in one hand, a proper dress in the other, and a question on his face. He must have run off to the house or had someone bring them down while I was lost in my thoughts. My family are more wonderful than I have words for. If I never marry, it's because I haven't found a man who can live up to the standard set by Ashwani and our da.  
     Once the water level is below crotch height, my weight is a little more than my healing hip and wasted muscles want to handle, and Asam and Dani are right by my sides the very instant I start to wobble. I wrap an arm around each of their shoulders, for once grateful of the bit of height by which I stand over the both of them, as it makes them so easy to lean on, and we walk forward out of the water.  
     Ilani appears in the clearing with a towel, some underclothes and strips of bandaging tucked beneath her arm, but she freezes when she catches sight of me, exposed to the air and shimmering like the damned coffers. Or like a fish, I suppose. If it was such a world-tilting shock for the person whose body it is, I can't fathom what she must be thinking just now. She shoves the various pieces of cloth into Ash's arms, takes a few steps back, wide-eyed, then flees back up the path through the woods.  
Asam and Madani are gently reassuring me that, 'it was just a bit of a shock,' and, 'she'll be over it in no time,' and that with my bedsheets and body clean, I'll have my little pachisi partner back before I know it. I'm having some trouble believing them just now.   
     Ash isn't saying a word—he's just putting the dresses and the underthings over one broad shoulder and holding up the towel so he can bundle me up in it when I'm fully out of the lake. The towel is barely around my shoulders before Asam has taken it and begun patting me dry. Ash offers his hands for support, and I grip them tightly, leaning on him as Asam is drying me from the top on down and Dani is wringing the excess water from my thick, sodden hair. She takes another towel aNFL ruffles it dry, then piles it atop my head with a long pin, then she grabs my breast band from Ash's shoulder.  
     I have lost weight pretty much all over as all the muscles have fled along with my appetite during my convalescence, but my breasts remain unchanged. They may even be a tad larger now, but I suspect it's a perspective thing. Same size breasts on a smaller body just look bigger. Dani, standing there in a sodden breast band her body doesn't actually require, remarks on how unfair this is as she winds the strip of cloth about my chest, tying it tight and tucking the tails. I wonder how she is so good at this if she doesn't need one, but the thought flees my mind before I can ask, as I catch sight of Ilani coming back into the clearing, a red flush high on her cheeks, the same dark bronze as mine.  
With my breast band wound, Ash shifts his supporting grip from my hands to my underarms so I'll have my hands free to finish putting on my own undergarments. Asam, Dani and Ilani stand back until I have my loin wrap secured and Ash has eased me back into the barrow (my pillowcases have been changed!) to sit for a moment, at which point they all converge. Asam has bandages and a waterskkn for my new scales, Dani has lotion for my damp and drying skin, Ilani has an apology written across her face–one I'm sure will spill out of her lips once she's certain I'm listening-and Ashwani is standing bemusedly in the background just holding my clothing and waiting as the pack converges on me. 

**Author's Note:**

> Was that contrived and kitschy and awful? Cos I can't separate my reader brain from my writer brain and I feel like if I could reader brain would like it, but part of me is like 'you just think that cos you wrote it, kid'. TELL ME THINGS. 
> 
> (Also I'm working from my mobile so if one of you beauties can hook me up with a way to indent other than going in and typing space-space-space-space-space-space-space on every bloody paragraph, I'd be forever grateful. Will beta for indention info)
> 
> Non-indentation feedback also very much appreciated—you're the first public forum for this story that's been rattling about for way too long


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